


From Out of the Shadows

by HelgaHeason



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Depressed Steve Rogers, F/F, F/M, How Do I Tag, M/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), References to Depression, Technology, The Avengers Are Good Bros
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-08 07:38:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19102645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelgaHeason/pseuds/HelgaHeason
Summary: - Although seen as an enemy, pain is a friend. -The events of Endgame leave everyone battered, bruised, and emotionally exhausted. Although Steve's super serum has been reactivated by Shuri, he's stuck in a world he doesn't particularly want to live in - as are the others, lost without their fellow Avengers. Something terrifying is beginning to stir in the heart of a young boy, and none of the Avengers are any the wiser. When the beast inside decides to show itself and roar, the surviving Avengers and their comrades must force themselves out of the shadows and fight once again - and maybe this time, Steve won't be so alone.(Slight AU where Shuri manages to reactivate Steve's super soldier serum, although it leaves him depressed, like the rest of the surviving OG Avengers.)





	1. Retribution

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this after watching Endgame for the second time. I’m happy with the way Endgame ended the Infinity Saga, but I’m sad that it had to end that way.
> 
> With that said, here’s this fic I wrote to try and make myself feel a little better.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve mourns what was, and tries to think about what could be. The only problem is, it's not that easy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please do not read if you have not watched Endgame.

Above the compound, the moon glowed a waxy white, flushed pale against the inky black sky. If Steve tilted his head to the side hard enough, he could almost kid himself that he saw Carol Danvers, that rushing blue and red comet, coming in to land with Tony Stark in tow. Steve knew that this was just his disillusionment coming into play; he knew Tony Stark was dead and wasn’t going to come back. But that didn’t stop the pain or missing the genius. Sure, the genius was an asshole and pissed Steve off more times than he cared count - but he was also so brilliant, so intelligent, and so goddamn caring that sometimes it physically hurt to be near him. He was so selfless to the point of giving up his own life, and dying saving the entire universe from Thanos. Steve found himself wondering if perhaps Tony was one of those stars twinkling at him, laughing at his pathetically miserable state, making some sort of snarky joke about his own self-deprecation issues. He sighed, and headed back inside. The compound had been rebuilt by the surviving members of S.H.I.E.L.D, in Tony’s memory, but didn’t feel like home. It never really had. For all its faults and flaws and that it was still technically Tony’s home, the Avengers Tower had actually felt like home. Maybe because the man himself had lived there, maybe it was because that’s where Steve lived before the Sokovia Accords and everything went to shit, or maybe because it was the first place Steve had actually recognised as somewhere he could be himself in. The compound didn’t feel the same at all. It served the same purpose, and in many respects was so much better than the Tower because of its purpose-built layout, but it failed to assure Steve of its homeliness and instead felt somewhat suffocating in its shiny, sparkly unease, and brilliantly clean claustrophobia.

Natasha, too, had left behind her scars. She’d died so quickly and without proper cause, that often Steve felt compelled to find a way to get to Vormir and see if he could bargain to get her back - take her place, perhaps, do the sacrifice play. He never went to the planet, though. He couldn’t stomach the idea of visiting his friend’s lonely, isolated grave. Not after he’d done it when resetting the resting place of the Infinity Stones. It gave him such an uneasy chill, such a deeply-routed, nauseous gut feeling, that he hadn’t wanted to stay any longer than was necessary. Part of him had hoped that Natasha would return upon giving the Gatekeeper the stone back, and the logical part of him knew she wouldn’t - but that didn’t stop it hurting when he realised that she was gone for good, that she hadn’t returned. He should have felt some degree of angry that the Gatekeeper was none other than the Red Skull, the man who’d caused him to crash the plane in the first place, but he couldn’t. All anger he may have had within him had vanished just as quickly as his sadness had returned. The bloodstains at the bottom of the cliff - imprints of deaths and bodies that once were - almost reminded him of the things he’d seen during the Second World War, and that got to him startlingly quickly. Bruce later told him that he could ‘run away from your pain all you like, but you’ll never actually outrun it’. He had to admit that was true.

Steve had gone back, lived his life, and come back again having aged as he was supposed to. But although Bucky had been happy, and Sam had (at first reluctantly) happily taken on the sparkling shield and title of Captain America, the others hadn’t been so happy. Sure, Thor had swanned off into the depths of space with Quill and his mad lot, but not before verbally slapping Steve and giving him an Aesir telling-off, stating that the world still needed Steve Rogers. At times Steve really liked Thor’s childlike optimism. That wasn’t one of those times. Clint had gone home to his family and hung up the Ronin mantle, but again, not before sternly telling Steve that he couldn’t just leave them, not when there was probably worse than Thanos out there, just waiting for them to drop their guard. Steve thought this a little hypocritical, but wished Clint the best all the same, and took his words onboard. Only Bruce remained at the compound, battered and injured from the gauntlet, and he too was displeased at Steve’s decision. He understood, of course he did, but he still wasn’t happy about it. So he’d called Shuri round. At first, Steve had absolutely no idea what was happening and why Shuri was yelling about a scientific breakthrough - for the life of him he’d never understand Tony’s and Shuri’s yellings about such things, and his heart ached upon remembering that they’d never actually met - and then when Shuri injected him with something, he understood. They’d reactivated his super soldier serum. His enviable youth and extreme strength and stamina returned - and he felt his heart drop. It was what he had lived to get rid of, and now it had been brought back.

As Steve returned to his own room, he remembered what Shuri had said to him, her thoughts on the situation.  
“God needs his righteous man.” she’d said. “Humanity doesn’t deserve him, but he will fight for his people anyway - he will fight until it kills him, as he always has done.”  
And when he’d asked what on earth she meant by that, as no-one had called him that in years, she’d simply responded by saying that some titles weren’t so easy to get rid of. Not even messing with time could get rid of the title ‘God’s righteous man’ - especially, she said, when he seemed so determined to play into that title, being the guy with the heart of gold and the one who never backed down from a fight, not even if it killed him. He supposed she was right. Of course she was. At times, it felt like ‘God’s righteous man’ was just a persona, a name for some better being besides himself - but at other times, it felt like it was the only title he’d ever had, Captain America aside. He just couldn’t escape it, no matter how hard he tried.  
He kept thinking on this, long into the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta read by the Endgame support gc on Twitter!
> 
> The title means “punishment inflicted upon someone as vengeance for a wrong or criminal act”. I felt like it suited Ross’ ideology of the Avengers being criminals, and Steve feeling like this was his punishment for both that and Tony’s death.
> 
> I’m on Twitter and I take fic commissions, DM me here:  
> \- [Helga Heason](https://twitter.com/HelgaHeason)
> 
> Help support my work by buying me a coffee here:  
> \- [Helga Heason Ko-Fi](https://ko-fi.com/helgaheason)


	2. Contact

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce gets Steve to leave the compound, and Steve meets up with the kid he’s mentoring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly don’t know how much of this fic will be dialogue. I don’t think it’ll be much.

Steve woke up about two hours after he’d fallen asleep, feeling oddly physically refreshed, but just as mentally lethargic as usual. He glanced at his clock, which read 7:00am, and groaned. One hour until he had to be up and out mentoring this kid - something Bruce had set him up doing, to try and ease his weary mind into something more useful and cathartic than just wallowing in his own self-pity all day. His mentee was a good kid - a little morally lacking, but that wasn’t anything ‘God’s righteous man’ couldn’t fix. He was in the top secondary school in the area, and had consistently high grades. He was studying robotics, and wanted to go on to get a place at the Stark Internships, which were now run by S.H.I.E.L.D agents who thought they knew better (they didn’t, Steve said bitterly in his head). Steve liked the kid. He really did, the guy was nice and friendly and easy to talk to - but because of his interest in robotics and the Stark Internships, Steve felt that Tony was far more suited to being this kid’s mentor than he was. And then, of course, the crushing realisation of Tony’s death would crawl its way back to him, and he’d want to crawl into a hole and die all over again. Blinking wearily, Steve just sat there and mindlessly watched his clock tick over to 8:00am, and heaved himself up.

The walk to his mentee’s house wasn’t too bad - it wasn’t the best walk he’d ever had, but again, it was far from the worst. It could be easily driven - maybe 10 - 15 minutes in the car - but Steve preferred the mind-numbingly boring way of torturously walking the hour-long path to the kid’s house. If he was going to get even some semblance of better, Bruce had better believe he was going to go on painfully long walks. The sheep were out in the fields again, baa-ing with all their might and bleating their worries away. Their neighbors, the cows, joined in with their mooing and stomping, and the nearby pigs chimed in with the occasional grunt. It was a cacophony of animal noises, like some sort of farmyard orchestra. Steve spotted a black sheep there once, and mused thoughtfully about whether or not he was the black sheep of the Avengers, for a while. Tony was definitely a pig, the greedy gannet, whereas Natasha was probably a chicken - pretty and incredibly deadly if messed with. One of those chickens had allegedly pecked a man’s eye out once. What Steve would give to be one of those worry-free sheep. He might have a short life and die a painful death, but it would be a good short life while it lasted. Hopefully. If he was lucky.

Steve knocked gently on his mentee’s house door, and it opened a few seconds later. He was greeted with a bruising bear hug, surprisingly strong for how skinny the kid was, but Steve figured he probably worked out in his spare time. The kid went off to find his work, and Steve plopped down on the sofa in the main room. It was a squishy sofa - a little old, a little battered, but it served its purpose and it served it well. If only Steve could say the same for himself. His mentee came back in the room, and sat down next to him, smiling that brilliantly sparkling smile of his that reminded Steve so clearly and painfully of Tony.  
“Nathaniel.”  
The kid nodded.  
“Good morning, Mr Rogers.”  
Was it a good morning? Steve shrugged. He supposed it didn’t really matter. It was all figures of speech and polite greetings. He pulled Nathaniel’s work toward him, and began reading through it. He skipped the science and robotics stuff to save until later, when he was a bit more awake and could be bothered to attempt to tackle it, but immediately got right into the politics. Nathaniel was always a good person to go to if he wanted to talk about politics. He didn’t believe in the idea of democracy or anarchy, but rather something inbetween. The foundation for a new society, he kept saying, or something along those lines. At times it reminded him of the Sokovia Accords. Sometimes, during those times, he almost wanted to return to the time of the Sokovia Accords, before everything had completely gone to shit. And then, during those times, when he realised he wasn’t listening to a word Nathaniel was saying, he shook his head and returned to reality.

Steve left Nathaniel’s house some time later, having had several interesting discourses on the endless possibilities of time travel (he’d had to bite his tongue during this one to prevent himself from saying anything), how Tony’s technology could actually probably destroy the world in the wrong hands, and what the world would do now that Tony was dead. Steve dully suggested ‘move on’, but Nathaniel, being the whip-smart kid he was, stated that he knew Steve wasn’t doing so well, he likely hadn’t been since Tony’s death, and likely wouldn’t ever be fully mentally well again. Steve had shrugged and replied that sometimes life didn’t always roll the way they wanted it to, and that that was OK, it just took some time to get used to and work around this massive change. He wasn’t wrong, but having to admit that to himself was a little more painful than he had planned to feel then and there, and he’d abruptly changed the subject to the science stuff Nathaniel had to do, which the kid had been more than happy to talk about. He entered the compound, fully prepared to just head off to his room, wait until it got dark, and watch the stars again as he usually did, but Bruce was lingering in the main room.  
“So how’s Richards?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title comes from the fact that this is the first time we see Steve have any contact with any other living being (besides Bruce).
> 
> I’m on Twitter and I take fic commissions, DM me here:  
> \- [Helga Heason](https://twitter.com/HelgaHeason)
> 
> Help support my work by buying me a coffee here:  
> \- [Helga Heason Ko-Fi](https://ko-fi.com/helgaheason)

**Author's Note:**

> I’m on Twitter and I take fic commissions, DM me here:  
> \- [Helga Heason](https://twitter.com/HelgaHeason)
> 
> Help support my work by buying me a coffee here:  
> \- [Helga Heason Ko-Fi](https://ko-fi.com/helgaheason)


End file.
